Technical Artificial Intelligence

• chair: prof. dr. John-Jules Meyer
• graduate student adviser: prof. dr. mr. Henry Prakken

• more general information
• more background information

Ever since Alan Turing in 1950 published his famous article Computing Machinery and Intelligence the prospect of having computers perform intelligent tasks has kept drawing researchers and practitioners to the fascinating field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Currently, AI is a central theme of computer science using a new paradigm: (multi-)agent systems. Multi-agent systems consist of components, the agents, that are thought of as autonomous, goal-directed and knowledge-based, that is, they are aware of the environment they are in and aim to achieve their goals by operating strategically in that environment.

Our programme teaches students to work and do research in this exciting and constantly developing field. The focus is on three areas:

• Agent Technology is about logical and symbolical models of agents and multi-agent systems, with special attention for reasoning and communication.
• AI Techniques integrate models of agent reasoning and interaction with probabilistic and subsymbolic techniques for making agents learn and adapt to their environment.
• Agent-Oriented Software Engineering focuses on the notion of an autonomous agent as a new software engineering paradigm.